A recipe of my own (or at least an adaptation of my own) has finally worked for me this week. Halleluiah. The only problem is that it's another bread recipe. We will all soon perish of carbohydrate overload. At least we will die happy.

For a yeast bread, this is surprisingly easy and quick to make. It took me only a few minutes to mix and knead while regular loaf breads take me probably twice as long.

It's also infinitely adaptable. Whatever fillings you usually like in cinnamon rolls (apples, chocolate chips, brown sugar, etc.) will work wonderfully in this bread.

Heat milk and butter in microwave or on the stove until the butter melts (30-45 seconds in the microwave.) Add water (if the milk/butter is very hot, use cooler water; if not, use warm water--you want it to be about 110 degrees when the liquids are all added).

Mix in sugar, then yeast. Add eggs (it's helpful if you've beaten them before you add them). Add vanilla.

Stir in 1 C flour. Then add the second cup. I turned mine out here to knead. If yours needs a little more flour to be firm enough, add a little more flour. Add about 1/2 C flour and knead it in. Your dough will be slightly different than regular bread dough due to the high butter content of the rolls. When it's ready you'll be able to make a nice impression with your hands in the dough and your fingers won't get dough stuck to them when you pull it out. It'll be a nice soft, slightly oily ball of dough.

Put it in a bowl and let it rise till doubled, about an hour.

Once it's risen, pull it out, punch it down and then put it on a lightly floured surface and roll it out to about 12x20 inches.

It should end up a few milimeters thick.

Now add your 1/2 C of melted butter and smear it around evenly with your fingertips. Combine the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle it about evenly. If you'd like add several tablespoons of brown sugar as well. I will not tell your dentist.

Then you're going to cut it into five 12x4 inch strips.

﻿Stack these strips on top of one another.

Mine kind of stretched this time (they didn't last time) I think because I didn't flour my surface and because I let the bread rise too long while I ran errands this morning. I just squished and patched as necessary and all was well. ﻿

Then cut your log of strips into 6 equal chunks.

﻿

And place these in a greased 8x5 inch bread pan with the cut sides up.

﻿

Let rise till doubled--40 minutes or so. The slices will get nice and cozy and touch all the sides (sorry I forgot this picture--too eager to get mine in the oven I guess.)

Bake﻿ at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

Let cool for about 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out on a serving platter and frost the top. You can also frost the individual hunks as though your frosting were butter, but I'm not sure I can recommend that in good conscience. I used maple frosting a la pioneer woman, though a cream cheese one would be awesome too, or whatever is your favorite. ﻿

Need any more inspiration for sweet treats this weekend, check out sweet-as-sugar-cookies Sweets for a Saturday. There are LOTS to choose from. Need inspiration for bread, check out Cupcake Apothecary.

13 comments:

I love how you made this into a picture tutorial. It's so great to see the whole process. When I made mine, I also had a big stretching problem due to not enough flouring or because I used waxed paper. Still, your bread looks perfect and sounds mmm mmm good. That maple frosting sounds like it pairs really well with this. Thanks for letting me know about your post so I could come check it out. If you get a chance, I would love it if you could come and link it up to the sweet treats linky party going on at my blog - http://sweet-as-sugar-cookies.blogspot.com/2011/04/sweets-for-saturday-11.html.

I'm going to make the orange version tomorrow morning, but w/ a plain orange glaze instead of the cream cheese *sniff* due to our dairy allergies... Elijah is uncertain about them being orange flavored, but Pete and Hannah and I tried to explain how awesome it will taste :) I'll let you know how it goes!!

It's in the oven! It is certainly a lot more work that I'm used to for a sweet treat, but I hear it's worth it :) However, I will let you in on my mom's secret for when she's short on time and we want cinnamon rolls. She buys a couple of boxes of Jiffy pizza crust mix and uses that for the dough. You may cry SACRILEGE, but it's actually really good and cuts the time by hours. Of course it costs more, so doesn't exactly fit into the cheapskate budget.

It is awesome! Elijah didn't like because of the orange flavor, but wants to try it cinnamon-style. It's worth the effort... a friend suggested starting it the night before and doing the 2nd rise in the fridge. I think that's BRILLIANT! Oh, and I totally messed up the measurements while cutting and it still worked out... I won't worry about using a ruler next time!

I'm having another Themed Baker's Sunday linky party! The theme this week is bread! I'd love for you to join!http://cupcakeapothecary.blogspot.com/2011/05/themed-bakers-sunday-4.htmlAlyssaP.S. I'm definitely going to make this!

Congrats! You were in the top 6 for this week's Themed Baker's Sunday at Cupcake Apothecary! Make sure to grab your I was featured button on the side of my blog! I hope to see you for this next week's Themed Baker's Sunday where the theme is CHEESECAKE! Submissions start tomorrow, so don't forget!http://cupcakeapothecary.blogspot.com/2011/05/themed-bakers-sunday-5.htmlAlyssa

Looks delicious! I'll have to try it. When I was still living at home my Mom would make a similar recipe by forming the dough in balls and rolling them in butter/cinnamon/sugar and stacking them in an angel food cake pan. I'm here from the cupcake apothecary and I'm your newest follower. Have a great weekend!

Hi Martha, I've had it with balls too. We call it monkey bread. One thing I love about the pull apart bread is that it's less time consuming to make than monkey bread, but has a similar taste effect (i.e. lots of sugar and cinnamon among all the bread-y parts:).

What a presentation! I love this idea. Thanks for posting this recipe and the terrific pictures. I love it and can't wait to try this. I have made monkey bread and even put monkey bread (cubes) in muffin tins, but this pull apart bread looks impressive! Thanks.